About Me
For a brief couple of years in the mid-Nineties, London-based Tiger brightened up the music scene with their spiky, off-kilter mixture of throbbing keyboards, thrashy guitar and idosyncratic lyrics. Acclaimed by the music weeklies as the Next Big Thing, they released a string of great singles ahead of their debut album, but sadly imploded under the weight of expectation before the release of its follow up.In a well-publicised accident of fate, Tiger were signed to Island in 1996 after A&R reps attending a gig caught their appearance as an unbilled support act and were suitably impressed. However, their debut single, the ebullient 'Shining In The Wood', was released on the indie label Fierce Panda in the Summer of 1996. The music press soon championed the band on the back of some exciting live performances which often bordered on the chaotic. Tiger it seemed had a sound of their own, a sound which was fresh and exciting. Too shifty, shouty and eclectically awkward to be considered 'Britpop', and too leftfield and arty to be taken up by the lager anthem crowd, they nevertheless provided a welcome alternative to the bands who wore their Kinks and Small Faces t-shirts a little too obviously, not to mention others whose output were facsimiles of the works of Wire.Whilst the debut album 'We Are Puppets' couldn't quite maintain the quality of the initial singles, it did contain a number of fine tunes, including 'Shamed All Over', the twisty 'Storm Injector' and the breathlessly thrashy 'She's O.K.'. After an 18 month gap, the band returned in August 1998 with the wonderful 'Friends' single With a shiny production job courtesy of Stephen Street, it was a great pop record. Unfortunately, by the time the second album, 'Rosaria', was released to little fanfare on the Rough Trade imprint Tugboat, Tiger had split. Julie Sims went on to play with Fly International, that features multi-instrumentalist Donald Ross Skinner. Dan Laidler started a new band with drummer Gavin Skinner and Donald Ross Skinner, plus works on solo ventures sometimes performing with various friends.
